Help Is Coming After Florida Coronavirus Unemployment Claims Hammer State Agency
TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) - The state continues to get hit with a daily avalanche of new unemployment claims.
The agency says improvements to speed applications are being made daily.
For the week of March 21st, Florida had 74,313 people apply for unemployment. Last week they tripled to just over 202,200, Sunday alone 21,000 thousand people filed.
Ken Lawson, Executive Director of the Department of Economic Opportunity said the system was not designed to handle something like the fall out we're seeing from the coronavirus crisis.
"Our system was designed to help our state during a hurricane, but not during a global pandemic," he said.
Several women, newly unemployed and frustrated at the inability to file online, showed up at the agency's headquarters in Tallahassee Tuesday morning.
"We are completely out of funds. I mean, we are fixing to be in trouble," said Chery Regha.
"There so many people that's trying to get through the web site, it's very difficult to get through," said Lana Stokely.
Showing up in person didn't help. The building is closed to the public and all claims must be filed online.
Lawson said help is coming.
Seventy of 100 new positions at the department, authorized by Governor Ron DeSantis, have been filled. Lawson said that is just the beginning.
"We've hired an outside call center that will staff up to 250 people to handle uploads of calls. Also, I have my IT team working night and day to increase capacity, so when people apply online, there's more capacity and bandwidth. Also, I reprogrammed people from my own shop to work with these issues," he said.
Under current Florida law, those applying for reemployment assistance must be out of work for one week before they can apply. On Tuesday, DeSantis waived that requirement.
A mobile app to speed the applications process is also on its way.
First implemented in 2014, the computerized application system used by the DEO has had problems since the beginning.
Lawson said he plans to make recommendations about what to do about it, but not until the current crisis is over.
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